Thursday, August 13, 2009

Okay, so this one'll be two days in one. Partly because I didn't type anything up last night, and partly because there wasn't a whole lot to write about, until the evening anyways. Yesterday we left Victoria at around 11, I think, and while we were waiting to board the ferry I checked Facebook, and noticed that Nick had written on our friend Eriks wall, saying he was going to be in Revelstoke. I didn't have a whole lot to do while we waited so I was looking at my maps and realized we would be going right through Revelstoke! Now, I was at least a day behind on my Facebook updates reading, so I thought that Nick was going to be through Revelstoke the next day, and thought it would be really cool if we stopped in Revelstoke the same time Nick was passing though. After some logistical planning, we decided to drive straight through to Revelstoke that day, so we wouldn't lose too much time getting to Calgary on Thursday. That's when the 'not much' kinda took over. Got on the ferry. Took pictures on the Ferry. Got off the ferry. Oh, I played Star Wars Trilogy Arcade on the ferry, that was pretty sweet. But it was rather uneventful. We basically were just driving from there. I did some navigational awesomery to make sure we got on the Coquihalla this time, instead of going around it.

We pretty much drove in a strait line for a while, cell coverage going in and out the whole time. When we were a couple hours away from Revelstoke, I started trying to get ahold of Liz and Erik. All hail Facebook, I was able to get Liz's number and start texting her to try and meet up with them in town. Ah, text tag. After a little bit of back and forth, we got at least a few things worked out, an extra phone number, and some awesome planned out. More strait lines... And then we were almost in Revelstoke! Got mom a hotel room at the hotel Liz works at, and the woman at the counter called her on the radio and then gave me the walkie, and I called Liz to the foyer, that was pretty funny. Got mom settled, got ahold of Erik and he and his friend, who was visiting him from Ontario, make their way to mom's hotel room. Introductions ensued, and before long we were walking downtown to get some supper, we went to an Indian restaurant that also serves German food. Talk about a strange combination :P But it was really good. We took it back to the hotel room, and had to do a little improvising to get enough chairs set up for all of us. Sebastian and I constructed a bench out of two luggage racks and an ironing board. It actually worked really good, oddly enough. Again, goood food. I think I'm starting to grow a good liking to butter chicken.

After supper, we did some figuring and decided that I'd stay at Liz and Eriks for the night. It would give mom a chance to relax a bit, and give me a chance to hang out more, and let the former couch surfers become the couch surfed. Erik had to work during the night, he works the graveyard shift at the front desk of the super expensive hotel at the base of the ski hill, so I hung out with Liz and one of their friends, and Sebastien too when he got home again. We walked around town a bit, and tried checking out the meteor shower. Not much luck on my part, but Liz saw a few meteors in the sky. A good time was had. I think we got home and went to bed at around 3am, a big change from the rest of the trip so far, but it was a lot of fun. Erik got home at 7:30 the next morning, and we started getting out of bed at about 9ish. I'll say this: Liz and Erik have a really comfy couch. It is to be tried. After some more morning hangouts and some pretty great nostalgic video game conversations, we headed back to mom's hotel so we could check her out and get on the road again. We checked out at about 11, and decided to get some quick breakfast at Denny's.

Quick breakfast at Denny's is not what we got. I swear, it took an hour and a half to get breakfast at Denny's from the time we got there to the time we were eating. Erik and I had several rounds of table Jenga, and by the time our food actually came, it was rather disheartening that it was pretty crappy. We weren't exactly impressed. Long wait, poor food. Worse Denny's ever. Avoid it. Plus it put us that much longer behind schedule. So after breakfast, lots of goodbyes were said, and on the road again we were. I think I skimped out on a lot of the details from the Revelstoke hangout, but I'm trying to get two days in this post. Let me just reinforce that it was awesome, and Erik and Liz rule. I hope they read that :P But on the road again we were. And it kinda sucked today. About 20 minutes out of Revelstoke, I lost all cell reception, and we hit construction. We were driving through construction from Revelstoke to Banff. It was supposed to take 5 hours, we left at about noonish. We didn't get into Calgary until about 10 to 7 tonight. Construction all the way. You know what the worst part about being in a construction zone that long is? Not the slow and boring pace (That's actually alright for picture taking), not how behind schedule you get, not anything related to that at all. There's no place you can pull over and go to the bathroom. Anywhere. From Revelstoke to Banff. I'll tell you this much, by the time we were able to stop in Banff, I was racing like a piss horse. Tabi warned me about the construction before Banff but I didn't believe her, I guess I learned my lesson :P

But after Banff the road got pretty good. And then it started raining. Pretty good too. I guess that's my payback for saying to Tabi that at least it wasn't raining when she had car trouble coming into Saskatoon last week. Karma... It wasn't really all that bad, not once we hit the bathrooms, and it was a pretty straightforward drive to Calgary. The only problem is that the reason I wanted to get into Calgary at a decent time on Thursday was to try and hang out with Mike, but we didn't actually start trying to work out hangouts until I was almost in the city. Hindsight is 20/20 though, we'll put some actual effort into it next time. It sucks, but I guess it happens. So we got into Calgary, and after some re navigation (Sheila didn't take us to the right adress for my Aunt and Uncle, so I had to get us to their house the old fashioned way), we arived safe and sound at Aunty Brenda and Uncle Michael's house, just in time for some Chinese food.

And that's more or less the last two days. I'm sure I'll think of little tidbit stories as I talk to people, so ask me! For now it's time to relax a bit, take a look at some computers (There's always an issue for me to figure out wherever I go :P ), and get ready for tomorrow. Tabi and I are going to drive to Dumheller tomorrow, the weather is a little crappy for the Calgary Zoo, so dinosaurs will make a nice substitution. I need to empty my cameras and charge my batteries. Other then that, I'm going to try and get a good nights sleep, probaby on another couch. But oh well, this couch isn't too bad. So I don't mind too much. That's all for now then, hopefully I'll have some more awesome stories tomorrow to recall, I'm looking forward to the day. Tah tah for now.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Well, today was our day in Victoria. I'd say it was a pretty good day. We started off having a quick bit of breakfast in the morning, mostly just some toast and juice. I like toast and juice. And raspberry jam. I had apple jelly though, haha. The first thing we did as part of the actual day after breakfast was to go visit Aunty Bea. Well, my great great aunt I think, mom's great aunt... Something like that. She's 103 years old this year, oldest person on my family I think. I don't think I've actually seen her since I was but a wee tike, so it was pretty cool to see her now. I can't honestly believe how well she looks, for 103. You look around at most elderly people these days and about 90% of them are completely senile. Not Bea, she's completely with it. She may not be as able bodied as she used to, but if she isn't doing well for her age I don't know who is. It some ways I'd never want to live to be that old, but there's lots of ways I'd really like to. Can you imagine all she's seen since 1906? Talk about someone who'll know their history. I can't even think of what it would have been like to experience every major event of the century first hand. It blows my mind.

After our visit with Aunty Bea, Dode dropped us off in downtown Victoria, near the parliament building. The first thing we did was walk to the Royal Museum, they've got a big showing right now with a tonne of stuff from the British Museum. We took a look at some of the more modern exhibits first, though, which I found pretty boring to be quite honest. I'm not really into modern stuff, the Industrial Revolution is where I start to glaze over. But then we went down a floor and checked out the Treasures exhibit, where they had all the stuff from the British Museum. That is what I'm interested in. They had stuff from every part of the world, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Oceania, North America. Everywhere. All the really good stuff too. Perhaps the coolest thing is what I looked at right away, a full sized cast of the Rosetta Stone. I'd never seen it in person before (I guess I still haven't, but this is pretty close), only in pictures, and I didn't think it was that big. It's amazingly large. I was pretty taken away. I've always kinda liked museums, but I've never actually felt so close to a piece of history. There was a lot of other cool stuff on display too, a mummy, sarcophagus, typical ancient Egypt stuff. It was all pretty rad too. The other rooms of the exhibit had their own bits of flair; some cool stuff from Mesopotamia, some ancient Islamic artifacts, Greek and Roman statues and bronze work, some neat stuff from China and Japan, artifacts from Oceanic civilizations. That's about where it started falling apart though. Once it got to the North American stuff it didn't really hold up too well. There was even some things from the "modern" era, which was essentially a chair made out of assault rifles, and some high heeled boots with gemstones on them to look like Chucks.

We checked out the gift shops a bit, but that was about it for the museum by then. We went past the Empress Hotel to take a look at it. We originally wanted to go there for tea, but we found out before we left that it's ridiculously expensive, so I took some pictures instead. Oh, that reminds me. We weren't aloud to take any pictures of the British Museum stuff. At all. Not just no flash photography like the rest of the museum, absolutely NO photography. LAME.

But anyways, we walked past the Empress down Government St (I think), and made our way to Murchie's tea shop. Jen said it was an awesome place to get great tea from, so I wanted to check it out. I got three teas there today, some of their Earl Grey, some Darjeeling tea, and some Ceylon tea. The Darjeeling and Ceylon teas have specific names, but I can't really remember them right now, and want to leave that as a surprise for my fellow tea drinkers anyway; hopefully you'll share a pot with me. We also had lunch at Murchies, they have a cafe in their shop just next to the tea store. It was really really good. We both had panini sandwiches, which were absolutely fantastic. I've had panini's in Saskatoon before. These were nothing like them. I don't know if I can really go back to the Saskatoon ones now. We also had some cheese cake for dessert. <3 strawberry cheese cake. We also took another look at the tea wears at Murchies, and I ended up buying a nice new teapot with a built-in infuser. Only $14 so I'm super pleased with it. Makes an awesome pot of tea, too.

After lunch we walked back down the street toward the wharf, and stopped in at a hemp shop. It kinda threw me off when mom suggested we go in, I thought I would be the one to suggest it. But we went in, and I looked at some really nice hemp bunnyhugs and shirts, and mom checked out some earings. I ended up not getting anything, but she ended up chatting pretty good with the folks working there, and picking out some nice earings. From there we went a bit farther down the sgtreet and went into an Irish import store. There, I did buy a bunnyhug. A really awesomely nice green Guinness bunnyhug (don't act surprised). I really like it a lot. (Typing this paragraph, I just noticed that Firefox wants me to spell check bunnyhug to hoodie. Not happening) When we finally made out way down to the wharf, I was starting to get a little tired of walking around. We sat down for a bit and watched one of those live statue performer things. That was pretty neat, I think. He was pretty good. Didn't get a photo, though, too many people getting in the way. We made out way around the docks and back to the parliament building, where we sat down and waited for mom's cousin Christy to come pick us up. Before we sat down we got some fresh juice from a street vendor. Nothing beats fresh squeezed orange juice, with a splash of lime juice, on a sunny day. I spent the rest of the time we were waiting snapping pictures of everything around us. My inner shutter bug was having a field day :P

Once Christy picked us up and brought us back to Dode's, the rest of the family from the area started congrigating at her place. And let me tell you, these ladies were having a great time just hanging out and catching up. And hilarity ensued. So many stories, so many hands pinching my cheaks.... Haha, well not really. We took a swing down to the liquor store though; mom, Beth and I, to see if we could get some Dude Beer. No such luck, the closest place on the Island is in Nanaimo, so we won't be making it up there. I'm going to try again in Kamloops. But I did grab a new beer to try. It's an Irish Ale, called Red something. The bottles are in the kitchen right now and I'm laying in bed typing this, so I won't check now. But let me tell you, it's fantastic. I'm going to pick up a couple more sixers of it tomorrow before we leave so I can share it when I get home.

Back at Dode's, festivities were in full swing. And by that, I mean dinner cooking. It's one of those times where almost everyone is in the kitchen, hanging out, and helping with dinner. I loved it. I haven't had corn on the cob since I got braces in grade 8, but tonight made me miss it. And to add to it, I think everyone was buzzed. Even Dode and Peg, and they're in their 70's (I think anyway. I remember being told they're the same age as Oma.) What a great time. Eating dinner was even more fun. Corn on the cob, and beef dip sandwiches. I can't imagine anything much messier. What a riot that was. After supper we all sat in the living room, just visiting. I'd say there were at least 5 conversations going on at any given time. What fun, I really enjoyed talking about so much to everyone. Stories from when they were kids, when I was a kid, how things are changing, how they're staying the same, what they've all been up to. All sorts of different things. Smiles and laughter, all the way through.

Eventually things started dieing down, and everyone started to disperse. Lots of goodbyes, lots of hugs. I swear, it was like in a movie, where the family all gets together once a year and are completely over joyed to see eachother. I didn't think it really happened like that in real life, exactly like in a movie. But it does, I've seen it.

I think I'm cutting this short right now, mostly because I'm really really tired, and have been typing for about 30 minutes now. I actually climbed into bed early because I was tired. I'll try and expand on this more tomorrow, but for now I'm going to get some sleep. We're leaving tomorrow morning and heading to Kamloops, and to Calgary from there, so I don't want to have a hard time getting up in the morning. Also, the neighbours wi-fi is being a pain right now, and I want to make sure I can publish this tonight. So that's all for now, I'm sure I'll remember a couple more things to add in tomorrow. Tah tah for now, and wish me luck on the way home!

Day three of our adventure, and we’re sitting in Victoria right now, visiting with Dode while I try to get onto the neighbour’s wi-fi. We visited the German Consulate today, and while we didn’t get as far as we thought we would in the process of getting the German passport, we didn’t really walk away empty handed. We got some good information, I think. The documents that mom brought with her don’t really get us anywhere, but we know exactly which ones we need now, and we’re also going to get mailed with a bunch more information with exactly what we’ll need from who. We also found out that Aunty Ariane (Opa’s sister in Germany) CAN make copies of the documents that she has, as long as she gets them made at the town hall and are officially notarized and all sorts of other big words. Right now I think the task for mom is to be able to prove German citizenship, then we can move on to the passport. They’re also going to check into things and make sure that it can be given to me and Collin in the first place, if it’s not then we won’t even bother. Hopefully it is though, I don’t know when I’d go to the EU to do anything, but it’s nice to have an easy option when it comes to hopping around. That and it’s cool. I also thought the German consulate was pretty neat too; it was like going into a little embassy. Which I guess it kind of is. Only one party is aloud to come in at a time, empty your pockets, a quick metal scan, no cell phones are to be turned on, all that sort of stuff. Tedious, but cool.

We took the Vancouver SkyTrain to and from the World Trade Centre where the consulate is located, which mom had never done before and thought was super awesome and cool. I’ve done it a couple times before when I was visiting Riley, so it wasn’t quite as new and amazing to me, but I think that it’s pretty cool too. There’s just something about railed transit that excites me. I guess that’s one thing I would really love about being in Europe. I wish we had some sort of railed transit in Saskatoon, but we’re just too small and poorly planned out for any such system to work. But I digress. We went to a French restaurant in a shopping centre just across the way from the World Trade Centre when we were done at the consulate, and that was probably one of the best lunches I’ve had in a really long time. I had some sort of savory crepe with black forest ham, roasted tomatoes, and a fresh greens and herb salad. If I could say something in French to describe it I certainly would. SO good. Mom had a crescent sandwich with fresh fried mushrooms, mozzarella, and a fried egg. Or something like that. She loved that. It also came with fresh made French vegetable soup, which was absolutely fantastic. I think it’s almost as good as the butternut squash soup I had at earls a couple years ago. People know what I’m talking about :P Hers also came with the same salad, which she liked as well.

I didn’t take as many pictures during that part of the day as I had been the day before, but there wasn’t a whole lot to take pictures of, honestly. I got a few shots of one of the gardens we were waiting near as Brian came to pick us up. When we were all finished we were picked up by Brian from the SkyTrain station near their place, packed up our things, and bid them farewell. We made our way to the ferry boarding, we forgot we were still set an hour ahead on all our clocks and couldn’t figure out why no one was driving on the ferry to board for 3 o’clock. Then we realized it was only 2. We felt silly. A quick tour of the tourist trap they’ve got at the docks, and we waited out the rest of the hour by watching YouTube videos on my phone. When we finally boarded the ferry and got moving, we headed outside and I took a whole bunch of photos of everything around us. There wasn’t any wildlife except for a seagull, but there was a good amount of scenery and sailboats for me to snap up. There are a few nice shots, nothing amazing. My lens got pretty wet pretty quick; it was raining pretty good almost the entire time. There was a crappy arcade on the ferry, the only things worth playing were Pac-Man and Metal Slug 6, both of which were full each time I walked by, I was more interested in taking pictures anyway.

When we finally got to Vancouver Island it was a pretty uneventful drive to Dode’s in Victoria. Once again, we were greeted with wide open arms and huge hugs. Dode told me to walk down to the liquour store down the street when she didn’t have any beer, and I wanted to see if I could find some Dude Beer while I’m in BC anyway. No such luck at this store, so I just got some Kilkenny. Chris says she knows exactly where I can get some though, and I’m planning on getting a bunch of it to bring back for everyone. Dode made us some really good supper, and we’ve basically been sitting and visiting since we got here. Well, I’ve been trying to break into the neighbour’s wi-fi, but mostly the visiting. I’m about to give up on the whole Internet thing. Dode doesn’t have a computer so she cancelled her Internet, so I might be up the creek tonight. It happens I guess. Tomorrow we’re going to bum around downtown, see sites, and check out a bunch of things. I think we’re going to the museum, looking for a teashop, looking for some sort of bug thing, and some other stuff I can’t think of right now. I’ll be sure to write all about it tomorrow. We’re leaving Victoria on Wednesday, and getting into Calgary on Thursday. I need to talk to Mike before then so we can work something out to try and meet up, and on Friday Tabi and I are going to try and check out the zoo if the weather is nice. If it isn’t we’re going to go to Tyrell. I <3 both of those places so I’ll be happy no matter what. We’ll be on out way home Saturday, probably getting into town that evening, concluding the trip. I’ve had a really good time so far, haven’t really done much that was super noteworthy, but it’s been really nice to get away from things. Hopefully when I get back I’ll have some fresh prospective on everything, and I’ll be ready to start getting all my school stuff together.

But this has gone on long enough, I wish I could just sit down and write my school papers like this. I’m signing off for now, hopefully I’ll be able to publish this tonight, but I’ve got a feeling it’s going to just sit in MSWord for a couple days instead.

P.S.; I find myself able to publish this tonight, over 4 hours after having written it. I've been trying to get into Dode's neighbour's wi-fi during this entire time. I actually started writing to distract myself from the task. I finally gave up, and right before going to bed, suggested to mom that I use the spare room and she use the couch since the couch seems more comfrotable than the pullout, and I'll sleep longer and no one will wake me in here. Well, I lay down, turn off my phone tethering, and wouldn't you know it, one of the networks I couldn't pick up from the dining room (But was able to spot a total of 2 times during my searches) comes up with 80% signal in this room, and is an open network. Yeah... Goodnight everyone.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

We're in New Westminister right now in BC, staying with mom's friend Margaret from back in the school days. Yup, we're sitting in the back yard right now as they reminisce over the old days. Tomorrow morning we'll be leaving bright and early to get down to the German Consulate in Vancouver to submit all of mom's paperwork for this German passport process.

We left Jasper at about 10am today, later than I thought we would get out, but it was nice to be able to sleep in a bit and chat with Shawn and Jen in the morning. It was really cool to sit in the living room, drink morning tea, and just chat. I left Jen with a bunch of my White Monkey green tea as thanks for them letting us stay, and also told them to get ahold of me if they ever need anything with that new iMac of their that they have now. When we tried leaving Jasper this morning Sheila the GPS wouldn't locate the satellites, so I had to do some good old fashioned navigating. Actually I got my iPhone to do most of the work, but I made it sound like I was doing all the work :P We got out of Jasper without much of a problem, and we were on the road once again. Pretty boring for a while after that. I took a tonne of pictures on the road today though, mostly just of scenery as we went past it. Nothing overly interesting, but it gave me something to do as we drove and listened to CBC and podcasts. And then we quested for Tims!

We tried stopping in Kamloops to go to a Tims to get a little coffee and some lunch. That was a mini adventure. Sheila got mad because we weren't going where she was trying to tell us, and I finally put that Timmy Me app on my iPhone to use. Using my keep navigational skills, I got us to Tims where we enjoyed a nice sandwich and Ice Cap. Getting back on the road after that was pretty easy, Sheila was happy that we were finally following her directions, and back on the road we went. Although we didn't quite end up taking the route we thought we would. We had planned on taking the Coquihalla through the mountains to make it pretty easy to get around everything. But Sheila had other ideas. Instead of taking us on the Coquihalla, we ended up taking the side route on the 5 and 3 past Preston. The whole time mom kept telling me how we were on the Coquihalla and I kept telling her that we weren't, and before we knew it we were in Hope and weren't quite sure what happened. But we didn't lose much for time, and got to see some great scenery on the way.

We hit some rush hour traffic when we got to Chilliwack though, which I remember happening when I was visiting Riley while he was living there a couple years ago. Two lanes of almost moving traffic between Chilliwack and I assume Vancouver, we got off the highway so we could arrive here in New Westminister. But we had some fun trying to keep up with a couple recognizable vehicles, and were able to laugh at some stuff on the radio. Rush hour is always more fun when you're making fun of the other vehicles. We got into New Westminister at about 7pm Sask time, which is 6pm local time here. Pretty good I'd say. And a fantastically warm welcome! I couldn't really believe these two, well I guess I can. They've been acting like long lost school girls since they got together. Which I guess they are, haha. We had a fantastic supper, made by Margaret's husband Brian. Homemade caesar salad, poached salmon, steaks, and slow baked potatoes. Mmm mmm, it was tasty. Also, we've had about two bottles of sparkling red wine. Also very tasty. We've been sitting out here in the back yard since supper, they've been catching up and I've been chilling out with some Wi-Fi. Talked to dad and Collin on the skypes for a bit, read some articles, some Wiki. Actually not much out of the norm. Well, other than writing all this. Which hopefully will become the norm. I'm actually pretty surprised at how much I've been able to squeeze out of today, it's been pretty boring considering. Much more should happen tomorrow. But that's probably about it for now. I'm going to make sure all my batteries are charged up for tomorrow, I don't want my camera to die again while I'm using it. So tah tah for now, hopefully tomorrow's exploits will end up being much more interesting. Again, take a look at all the twittering, I'm sure there will be a lot more since we'll actually have cell service the entire time. I need to stop dragging this on. BYE!

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Well, we're in Jasper right now, staying with my cousin (second cousin technically... I think) Shawn. I've always liked Jasper, it's got a vibe to it, everyone I've ever talked to has always been great (and not just in that "I'm putting up with you because you're a tourist" kind of way), and it's probably one of the most beautiful areas in Western Canada.

We left the house this morning at about 7:30, and we arrived in Edmonton at around 1 in the afternoon. Pretty good time, considering we stopped in the Battlefords to take care of some business at a Petro Can and the GPS said we wouldn't get in until 1:20 or so. Take that Sheila :P We went to West Edmonton Mall where we had lunch at the Sherlock Holmes Pub in the Bourbon Street area of the mall. That place is sweet, they say they're a traditional style English pub, and having NO experience with English pubs, I believe them. The food was really good, I got what was called the Pub Club on a bun, essentially a chicken club sandwich, but with a seasoned chicken breast instead of cold cuts. It was great. And they even had really good fish and chips vinegar for my fries. And Guinness! I think that was the best part.

After we had our awesome lunch, we checked out a shoe store we passed on the way to lunch to look at some sandles. Birkenstocks! I've finally got a pair of sandles I really like. And they're made in Germany too, 'cause you know the Germans make good stuff. Haha, I'm happy about that, I've wanted a nice pair of Birks for a long time now. They had some other cool shoes too, a bunch that I think Braden would really like that I got a picture of that I'll be putting up with all the trip pictures when I get back. We also searched out one of the Source stores in West Ed, I wanted to replace my Zune transmitter since it was stolen when the Jeep was broken into. It was kinda funny being in there, their store is about the same size as ours, but they have double the products, double the staff, and double the customers. There is no room. I also had to give them a little instruction on how to give me my employee discount, which was really funny. Their staff was really nice though, better than most of the people here I'd say. I also got to check out the Apple store while looking for the music stores they have there. That was cool. Call me geeky, but being in the Apple store was freaking sweet. I could totally work in an Apple store. Checked out the music stores too, but they didn't have any Rush guitar books, so we were pretty much done.

From there we basically drove from Edmonton to Jasper, letting our trusty GPS Sheila lead the way (Which isn't hard, it was basically a straight line). The mountains came out of nowhere, I swear. Rather uneventful on that leg of the drive, which I guess is pretty good. Some wildlife here and there. We got into Jasper at about... 7? Got to my cousin Shawn's new place where a small family gathering was underway, namely my cousin Shawn, his brother and my cousin Darryl (I'm sorry if I'm not spelling that correctly, there's so many different ways!), his wife Shelly and their two kids, Abby and Mason, and Shawn's partner Jen. Oh, and Shawn and Darryl's mom, my great aunt, Bev was here too. I haven't seen any of them in a few years, I think Aunty Bev being the longest. I'd never met Jen before, she's really nice. And I also met Mason for the first time, I'm not sure how old he is, but he reminds me a lot of myself in some ways. Mostly the ridiculous antics parts. And we both had Super Man pajamas. That's awesome. It was really awesome to be able to visit with everyone, I like spending time with family like that, it's something I don't get the chance to do very much of.

That's pretty much today, more or less. Took a little walk around and saw Aunty Bev's apartment, and had a cool conversation with Shawn about a bunch of different things. I love talking to interesting people. And now I'm just laying in the basement typing my first recount of the trip. So that's all for now. Check out my twitter or facebook streams for little updates as the days go on, I'm sure there's a few little interesting tidbits that pop up on those. Anyways, I'll try and recount tomorrow once that night comes, hopefully I'll be around some internets so it can go online. Tah tah for now!

An adventure begins! Somewhere inside the next hour I'm going to be departing on what will probably be my only summer getaway this year. My mom and I are driving to Vancouver, primarily to go to the German consort to see about being able to get her a German passport, but we're going to try and have a fun trip around it. We're going to be driving through Edmonton, stopping for lunch and a little bit of shopping at the West Edmonton Mall, then continuing to Jasper to visit and stay with my cousin Shawn. From there, I think we're drviving to Vancouver to see and stay with an old friend of my mom's. A quick visit to the consort the next morning, and then we're off to Victoria! A day or two there, and then we're headed back home, this time through Calgary where hopefully I'll be able to meet up with a couple friends for a visit. We should be due back next Saturday.

I think this trip is well deserved. I really need to get away from things for a bit. It just hasn't felt like summer, to use the words of someone close to me. It'll be really great to get away from things for a bit. I'm also going to do everything I can to go out of my way and blog every night during this trip. Hopefully it'll help me get in a better habit of doing it, plus it'll be easy to recount a day at a time instead of the entire trip at once. So hopefully all goes well, and you'll be able to read several posts this week.

Anyways, must finish getting ready before we leave. Wish me luck, and I'll see you all in a week!

Sunday, June 28, 2009

I haven't updated in a while, and I actually have legitimate things to post about (Fathers day quad rally!), but I haven't gotten around to it... But in the mean time, I wanted to share this awesome that I just stumbled upon on the Interwebs! Ahh, the power of Wiki!There's a band called Easy Star All-Stars, and according to the wonderful Pedia de Wiki, are "a reggae group who are signed to their own Easy Star record label, which is based in New York City.[1] They specialize in covering popular albums in a reggae and dub style". And they ROCK. I probably don't look it, but I'm a sucker for reggae music. It puts me in an awesome mood. If I'm feeling down, there's one thing that's almost guaranteed to cheer me up. Some nice reggae. And I think this might have just become my go-to when it comes to picking myself out of the gutters. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is one of my favourite albums... Evar. Now, imagine the awesome that is Sgt. Pepper, put it next to some reggae, and ask yourself; will it blend? *blender noises* FEW! Awesome smoke! Do breathe this! I swear, this is one of the greatest things I've ever listened to. Well, maybe not. But it's putting me in such a great place right now. I really think everyone should check them out. This is their website, and this is a YouTube playlist of Easy Star's Lonely Hearts Dub Band. Check them out. ASAP. This is going on my Zune right away.

That's all for now. I think this is a good idea though, posting about the music I stumble upon and people introduce to me. I don't know if this will become super regular, but I think it's a good excuse to get out smaller, more frequent updates. I can only twitter so much!

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Well this has been a long time coming, hasn't it? (I've just now been asked if I'm updating my blog. That's how unusual this has become). I suppose a lot of things have happened since I updated last. Obviously I haven't updated as often as I intended to do. I still want to try and get into that swing of things. It's hard to say what's happened between then and now, I'm sure there has been quite a lot. Too much to try and recap. I'll try and stick with some current events then.

Lately I've been hanging about in the basement, watching various DVD's with Karli and Riley. Lots of different things, TV shows; jPod, a little bit of King of the Hill (though that was at work, not in the basement), and a lot of movies; Phantom of the Paradise, Anchorman, Amadeus. Honestly that hardly scratches the surface. Karli and I went to High Tech and did one of the 7 movies for 7 days for $7 deals and we watched all but one. We're trying to watch as much a variety as we can, things that at least one of us haven't seen, as well as things that we all have and all like very much. There are so many different films that need to be seen. They're like books in a way. There have just been so many produced throughout the history of the medium, but at least films only take a around 2 hours to watch, where a book would take me almost a month sometimes. Speaking of film and books, Watchmen has been released in theatres. I have to say it's probably one of the best graphic novel to film translations I've ever been able to see. Actually that isn't really saying much. There aren't a very big handful of those types of films around. Lets just say that it's fairly amazing. I did my best to read the novel before the film came out, and did pretty good considering I only actually started reading it two days before the film came out. Still have about a quarter left of it to read I'm afraid, hopefully I'll finish soon. I'd like to make a post soley about Watchmen and how I feel about it once I've finished so I can comment having read as well as seen. But back on topic. We're just now in the basement watching the last episode of The Beatles Anthology, going through the history of The Beatles from their perspective. It's very interesting. Lots I didn't know, and since Karli is a huge Beatles fan I'll finally be able to know what she's talking about most of the time.

I've also been putting my time into school, though not enough time I'm sure. I dropped below full time status this term, which really hurt me a lot, my school year is considered unsuccessful by the student loan department in the government. But I've finally declared a major, which I think will really help get and keep me on track for next year and beyond. And what is it that I've chosen as my major of study? Archaeology! I'll be a regular Indiana Jones! Minoring in philosophy. I think it'll be a good time, archaeology was one of the classes I think I enjoyed the most during first year, and philosophy has always been one of the things I've felt is both interesting and important. If the archaeology part doesn't go so well I think I could fall back into political studies, I did well in that course this year and also found it pretty interesting.

I've also been trying to get into and discover new types of music lately. Shae has been helping me out with that a lot, she seems to be one of the most fantastic repositories for music that I've ever come across. There's been quite a number of bands that I've picked up on from her suggestions, the only one I can bring to mind right now though it Blitzen Trapper. They've got a nice and unique sound, I'd almost want to say that it's post-modern 70's classic rock. I'm not music expert though, and I'm sure what I've just said doesn't really work as a good description. The Eagles are in town right now, and we saw them. That was one of the best shows I've been to since the Barenaked Ladies came to Saskatoon. Neil Young is also coming in April, which I'm also looking forward to. I'll never claim to be a huge Eagles or Neil young fan, but their music has been around as long as I can remember, and I recognize a lot of it, maybe not as their, but I recognize it. I think that to be able to see it performed before me by it's originators is something that I've come to really enjoy. And it goes along with what I think is my only new years' resolution: Do More Stuff.

I think that's about the only thing that I really want to accomplish with this year, looking forward. I want to do more stuff. See more things, experience more of the world. For as long as I can remember, whenever something has come up, no matter what it's been, I've always hesitated about it and in most cases I've found an excuse not to do it. That's something that I really want to work to move away from. Karli asked if I wanted to go to the Eagles, I said yes without putting much thought to it. I'm glad I did, I got to listen to the band that recorded a lot of the songs I grew up liking, and also had a really good time. It wasn't worth the price of admission for me, but sometimes that happens. Besides, I didn't go to Bob Dylan, and I still haven't heard the end of it. Karli and I also went to Regina a couple of weekends back for a literary conference hosted at the U of R. Last year I would have thought of a reason not to go, but this year I want. I'm really glad I did. I had a great time, met a lot of new and interesting people, saw another campus, did some scienceing, and over all just had a good time. I always say how much I want to go on adventures, but I never do. And that's what I want to change. The hard part is going to be balancing my thirst for adventure with the real world, work and school. But with luck, that won't be too tough.

I should stop for now, I'm quickly running out of things to say. I'm going to say again, though, that I want to update once a week. I meant it last time and still mean it now. Hopefully I can stick to it, and keep what's going on in my life in perspective. I also hope that it will help me not forget things that happen to me, as is what so often happens. The details, anyway. But that's all for now. Hopefully there will be more soon. Tah tah.